Bernie Wants an International Brake on AI’s ‘Runaway Train’ — and He Brought Chinese Scientists

AI promised to be the helpful gadget that fixes everything. Instead it’s starting to look like a very fast locomotive that solves one problem and invents three new ones — and Senator Bernie Sanders convened a bipartisan-style intervention on Capitol Hill this week to say so.

Sanders sat on a panel with two leading Chinese academics, Xue Lan of Tsinghua University and Zeng Yi of the Beijing Institute of AI Safety and Governance, and spelled out a short syllabus of worries: misinformation spreading like wildfire, personal data treated like public trash, teenagers retreating into chatbot company, and the specter of automation hollowing out jobs.

He also raised the thornier existential question: what if systems gain capabilities that slip past their designers’ intentions? Sanders didn’t mince words. “The richest, most powerful people in the world are now building a runaway train with no brakes,” he said, arguing that a few powerful actors are pushing ahead without a clear safety map.

His prescription: international cooperation. Sanders called for something on the order of a Cold War–style treaty to set global rules, a recognition that no single country can shepherd AI safety alone. Xue Lan echoed a version of that globalist math: it’s “unimaginable” to let just a handful of countries and companies hold the most powerful tools while the rest of the world gets left behind.

Not everyone loved the optics of US lawmakers talking shop with Chinese academics. Some conservatives raised alarms about partnering with an adversarial government even while agreeing regulation is needed. Michael Sobolik of the Hudson Institute warned against cozying up to the Chinese Communist Party, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pushed an America-first spin on global standards.

This isn’t Sanders’ first rodeo of AI alarmism. In March he and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced a bill to pause new AI datacenter construction, arguing Congress is lagging behind a sweeping technological revolution. The debate now sits at the messy intersection of safety, geopolitics, and economics: who sets the rules, who gets to build, and who pays the social cost.

If tech is building fast trains, the conversation in Washington is whether to install brakes, build better tracks, or simply agree on which direction the train should go — and whether to invite engineers from Beijing to help draw the map. Either way, the future looks like something we’ll have to regulate together, or else it’ll regulate us.